A Few Thoughts on Election Integrity

 Having worked at the polls as a sworn Inspector for the past 15 or so years, I can attest to the fact that everyone I've worked with at the polls takes election integrity very seriously.   We are committed to a fair process that allows every registered voter to have their vote counted.  

Recently, a certain president has made an effort to discredit elections that he might not win. (Don't forget in 2016, he lost several GOP state primary contests and immediately labeled them "rigged." )  

While I'm aware of historical efforts to "buy" election, and rare cases of ballot tampering, elections in this country and this state (Mass.) are reliably managed  by individuals who take the vow of neutrality seriously. 

The effort to discredit mail-in voting has been ramping-up.  The first issue is the registered voter database.  Critics have cited cases where the rolls still contain thousands of names of people who have died or moved away.  They say these are possible means of voter fraud.  They worry that someone could send mail-in ballots for these dead and gone people.  Except that's not what happens in real life.  Some states actually compare signatures on mailed-in ballots against registration signatures. Most of the horror stories that are shared on social media involve some conspiracy theory, easily believed by gullible partisans.  Very few actual cases have been proven. 

The penalties for tampering in an election are severe.  This dissuades most potential tamperer. 

I believe Trump has been tampering with the election process since he was nominated and even more so since he was inaugurated.   I will not be surprised when, after being soundly defeated in the coming the November election, Trump and some of his appointees are indicted for election tampering.    This time he will not have a claque of enabling senators to save him. 

Secret ballot.  Some have raised the question of mail-in ballots not being secret.  Again, in my experience poll workers are sworn to maintain secrecy.  Typically, absentee ballots were aggregated as received, and not opened until voting day, when the Warden would feed the ballots into the voting machine, only examining a ballot if there was a malfunction (e.g. mis-marking of the ballot, causing it to be rejected).  Sometimes a voter will have their ballot rejected by the machine.  The Warden will always ask for permission to look at the ballot to determine the problem.  If the voter says "No," the problem ballot is destroyed and a new blank ballot is issued.  I am not sure how they do this in places where there is not a paper ballot.

Provisional ballots.  These are ballots that are given to people who show-up to vote but are not on the rolls.  At the discretion of the Warden, a ballot may be issued but is not tabulated until the claim of the voter can be reviewed/cross checked.  (In practice, there are only  handful of provisional ballots and are counted only if they could affect the outcome, say, in a recount situation)

Ballot Harvesting.  I think this is a recent concern stemming from the recent changes to allow large numbers of mail-in (versus "absentee") ballots.  Ballot Harvesting is when a third party (other than a relative or postal worker) collects ballots to deliver to a polling place.  Massachusetts does not address the legality of this practice, but it does seem open to possible abuse, and I would support making ballot collecting or harvesting illegal. 

Due to the pandemic, I will  not be working the in-person polls this November, but I feel confident that the results will not be "rigged."

Another Rental Car Rip-off Hertz and Platepass

Annoyance of the day: Another Rental Car rip-off - Hertz secret fees include and unholy alliance with a Company called Platepass.   Platepass is a transponder for automatic tolls.They don't tell you about it at the counter so you don't have the option to refuse it.  

If you go through a toll gate, they charge you an exorbitant "Administrative Fee" which they base on the # of days you rented the car, not on the day you actually used the transponder. 

My one and only trip through a toll booth was from Englewood CO to Denver Airport (30 miles). The tolls were $10 and the fee was and added $24. 

Hertz, you are dead to me from now on!  Don't ask for whom the bell Tolls,  it tills for you

I am not the only one who finds Platepass and Hertz compliance to be FRAUDULENT

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/platepass-com.html   

Unpopular Verdicts: Bad Juries or Bad Evidence?

Normally, the news story that captures our attention is the case of the innocent defendent who was wrongly convicted of crimes because of bad evidence or mistaken identity.  After umpteen years behind bars the condemned prisoner is set free, after new evidence is uncovered that controverts the trial evidence.  This has become commonplace thanks to advancements  in DNA analysis.   We try not to think about these cases when we trumpet the superiority of the American Justice System. 

Lately, there seems to be a common thread in recent high-profile cases where the acquittal verdict was egregiously wrong in the opinion of many armchair analysts and talk show bloviators.  The acquittal of Casey Anthony after her recent trial created a furor that has not been seen since the OJ Simpson murder trial in 1995.  Anthony, who has gone into hiding because of death threats, has been called "the most hated woman in America" since everyone thinks she got away with the murder of her daughter, Caylee.

If you followed the trial, you probably came to the same conclusion the rest of us did: Guilty!  The evidence was clear: The mother of the missing child never reported the child missing, and in fact was having a high old time, getting tattoos, competing in wet tee shirt contests, and generally acting with callous disregard for the fact that her baby was gone.  This was enough to convict her in the court of general opinion. But the verdict was Not Guilty on all counts.  Not reporting a missing child does not happen to be against the law.

In Boston last week another locally infamous case ended badly.  The defendant was Albert Arroyo, a former fireman who had claimed disability exemption from his job as fire inspector (not a physically demanding job) because of back pain due to an alleged on-the-job injury.  This same guy was simultaneously working-out with weights on a daily basis and was even competing in body-building contests.  The Boston Globe broke the story last year and published pictures of a distinctly well-muscled guy posing for photos. Clearly a case of fraud.  He lawyered-up. The fire department fired him when he refused to come back to work.  Then the feds decided to charge him with mail fraud.  

When the jury came back with a shocking acquittal, everyone was outraged.  How could these dumb jurors not see that he was as guilty as the nose on your face, they shouted.  Local Radio talk show bloviators dragged-out the old cases and questioned whether our system of justice works  when jurors did not have a clue. 

But when you consider the facts of the case, the real problem was that the jurors took their instructions seriously.  They matched the evidence against the charges and found that the proof was lacking.
This did not mean that they thought Casey Anthony or Arroyo were innocent.  In both cases, several of the jurors who were interviewed later said that they thought the defendant was guilty of a crime, but the prosecutors did not prove that the defendant was guilty of the specific charges.  They didn't prove mail fraud, which was the charge in the Arroyo case.  They couldn't prove murder in the Casey Anthony trial.

This doesn't indict the jury system, nor does it point to bad juries.  I think it points to flawed work by the  prosecution lawyers and investigators. In their haste to get favorable publicity, perhaps prosecutors rush to trial without a convincing case.  I don't really know the answer, but the point is that we, the public, should withhold our judgement in cases like this and not "punish the messenger" for an unpopular verdict.